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Ashlyn and her family

© Lina Jo Gilliland

Having read an essay from someone that I have been getting information from on the internet, I had thought about writing one as well. In fact my husband suggested that I do the same. I hope by writing my experience down that it will prevent someone else from going through some of the same things or possibly someone will read it and be able to help us out.

This is our story. Our daughter was born on February 15th 1999. It was a normal delivery, (second VBAC) and everything went well. She pinked up immediately and looked great. She was 7 pounds 1 ounce and 19 ½ inches long. That night she seemed to be choking, off and on and the nursing staff just told me that it was normal and that it was still probably just left over mucus from the birth. They ended up suctioning her out a couple of times, no big deal and she went home on time. We had a visit a couple of days later, because she had a touch of jaundice.

Everything appeared normal except every once in a while, she would spit up quite a lot and even have some come out of her nose. She would do that choking thing every time I laid her down to sleep where she would lay flat. During the day I would let her sleep in her chair, so she could rest comfortably. At night when I would put her in her cradle it would start, after I picked her up and comforted her she would either catch her breath or spit up and then be fine.

So her pediatrician put her on Zantac, then 2 weeks later he decided to try Propulsid. This was when she was about a month old. When she was 6 weeks old we took a trip out of state for a wedding. She did really well on the 7 ½ hour car trip, but had recently started crying every night around 6:30pm and would be done by 9:30pm.

The following week we were at home again, she was now 7 weeks old. I was giving her a bottle about 7:00pm on April 9, 1999, and she had what appeared to me to be a seizure. She just started to turn her head to the left and then just kind of stared off for a minute or so. Then, her left arm and foot started to jerk repeatly. My heart just sank, I just knew that it was a seizure. I had them when I was a child and remembered what they were like. When my husband came home that night I told him that I thought she had had a seizure, so we decided to keep an eye on her that night for a while.

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